Two pieces of commonly-known advice are pertinent here: “Our fingers truly are the most versatile tools known to man.” For young schoolchildren, “The only safe thing to put in your ear is your elbow.” The reason for the second piece of advice is that an ear drum is easily damaged. Fortunately, the size of a person's fingers and the dimension of the ear's entrance way do not permit the fingers to reach as far in as to touch the ear drum, although long fingernails may still be a hazard to the ear drum. Among the more common reasons for an average person desiring to reach into the ear canal are removal of accumulated earwax, water after swimming or showering, soap and shampoo residues. Among the more common techniques used or devised by non-professional personnel to remove the undesired matter from the ear, are hand-held or hand-directed wads of absorbent cotton, toilet paper, napkins, rags, or cloth that are pushed into the ear and to some degree rotated. These devices may be reasonably effective in absorbing liquids but generally are ineffective in removing accumulated earwax. A problem may be exacerbated when wax is pushed further into the ear.
Frequently, and often unfortunately, rigid core extensions are provided for the person's fingers in the form of sticks, tweezers, nail files, toothpicks, all frequently wrapped with absorbent cotton and then inserted in the ear. Small diameter somewhat flexible rods covered at the ends with attached absorbent cotton form the well-known Q-tip.
These basically rigid extensions to the fingers are a real hazard to the eardrum when manipulated and maneuvered by persons not truly familiar with the ear's construction, or having unsteady hands. The extensions may be subject to vibrations or bumping, e.g., when in a moving vehicle, or by sudden movements by the subject (one person frequently performs ear cleaning on another, e.g., mother and child, hairdresser and customer). Lives become more difficult and unnecessarily more complicated when an eardrum has been punctured.
These are not hypothetical hazards. Rigid core or stick-based cotton-tipped applicators have been known to cause abrasions, scratches or damage to the ear canal or eardrum puncture. In addition cotton tips that are wrapped around rigid cores or sticks have detached inside the ear canal. Moreover, conventional rigid core or stick-based cotton-tipped applicators have been known to push wax and debris deeper into the ear canal, exacerbating the very problem they were intended to alleviate.
What is needed is a device for effectively cleaning or drying the accessible interior of the ear. The device should have a high degree of maneuverability like a person's finger and shall not include a rigidized extension that presents a hazard to the eardrum.